The Mighty Wurlitzer
Propaganda and Disinformation in the JFK Assassination
by Dale Thorn
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Frank Wisner and Associates

In 1948, CIA OPC (Office of Policy Coordination) director Frank Wisner began a
project called Mockingbird(1), to put newspaper columnists and other media
journalists on the CIA offline payroll. The purpose of this project was to have
the paid journalists rebut stories unfavorable to the CIA's ongoing work, and
to plant new stories that would make it easier for the CIA to implement their
policy decisions all over the world. According to a number of independent
journalists and Rolling Stone magazine, Wisner and the CIA "owned" the top
media bosses in the U.S. including those at Time, Newsweek, NY Times,
Washington Post and many others. Wisner is quoted as boasting to colleagues
that his propaganda machine was like a "Mighty Wurlitzer", able to play grand
orchestrations of original compositions created by the CIA's paid news agents.

One of the most valuable CIA assets was Walter Cronkite, who in late 1964 held
the single-volume Warren report in his hands on national TV and told America
that they could trust the report. When American forces had routed the North
Vietnamese insurgents following the Tet Offensive in 1968, Cronkite told
America on national TV that "We are mired in stalemate"(2), which provided
positive propaganda for the North Vietnamese and may have cost the lives of
thousands of American soldiers as a result.

As the OPC (later merged into the Deputy Director for Plans office) grew in
power, Hoover of the FBI became both jealous and fearful of its influence(3).
Hoover began investigations of DDP's members and found many of them to have
left-wing and even Communist relationships. Hoover passed a lot of this
information along to Senator McCarthy, who extended his anti-Communist tirades
to the aforementioned elements of the CIA. At this point the CIA fought back by
unleashing the power of their Mockingbird media puppets on Sen. McCarthy,
which damaged McCarthy's reputation and ended his battle against the Communist
Menace.

Shortly after the Soviets invaded Hungary in November of 1956, Wisner had a
mental breakdown and was subjected to electroshock therapy at a Baltimore
psychiatric hospital. Wisner returned to work afterward and subsequently
retired from the CIA in 1962. Wisner committed suicide in October of 1965.

Wisner's associates in the agency included Cord Meyer and Philip Graham. Meyer
is alleged by some authors to be the person who hired the foreign assassins
that shot Kennedy(4). There certainly could have been a personal motive there,
given that Kennedy was allegedly bedding his wife Mary. In 2001 shortly before
his death, Meyer was asked who might have killed his wife. He replied "The same
sons of bitches that killed John Kennedy"(5).

Phil Graham was not only appreciated for his intelligence work, he gained
control of the Washington Post and several other journals and turned them into
mouthpieces for project Mockingbird. There were suspicions of foul play in his
suicide in 1963, and fueling those suspicions (among many other things) was the
knowledge that he was gradually cutting his wife Katherine Meyer Graham out of
his will and reassigning his inheritance to his mistress(6). Katherine's
family had owned the Washington Post since 1933 (and the CIA about half that
long), so she and her partners would have resisted the notion of losing it and
other property to her husband's mistress.

I would like to note here that where debunkers dismiss the notion of large
conspiracies, because of the improbable requirement that all of the people
involved are knowing participants in a crime of great magnitude, it's a classic
example of government disinformation. More likely is that someone like Cord
Meyer would get a request to procure some sharpshooters to provide security for
a sensitive detail, where Secret Service or other known agents might attract
unwanted attention.


The Zapruder Film

Major media describes the state of JFK assassination research as unsolved and
full of conflicting theories(7). To some extent that was true during the more
than eleven years that the Zapruder film was hidden from the public. Once the
film was shown on television in 1975, the ensuing uproar forced the Congress to
initiate a new investigation of the crime.

The best copy of the film, available on DVD from Amazon as "Image of an
Assassination"(8), offers a reasonably good view of the killing, requiring
little or no interpretation depending on how deeply one wants to get into the
details. This DVD also contains the original 1975 television broadcast with
Geraldo Rivera and Dick Gregory. Of particular interest in Geraldo's interview
are the illustrations of how the Warren Commission twisted the facts in their
own 26-volume evidence and testimony to produce the single-volume report that
conforms to the lone assassin story.

The following is my summary of the film's main features:

When Kennedy comes out from behind the freeway sign (around frame 200), we see
the clenched fists and elbows indicating he has been hit. There is speculation
that he's been shot in the throat at this point, possibly with a paralyzing
dart, or that the raised arms and clenched fists indicate a shot in the back.
The surgeons at the autopsy noted a shot in the back, and the doctors in Dallas
noted the small entry wound in the throat, so both of these shots may have
been made at this time.

At approximately frame 236, Governor Connally is hit in the back, which is
fairly obvious given how his right shoulder is driven down and his mouth opens
when the air is knocked out of him. Connally's dramatic and sudden reaction,
occurring two to three seconds after Kennedy was hit, dispenses with the single
bullet theory which claims he was hit when Kennedy was hit.

Just before frame 313, Kennedy is shot in the upper back of the head driving
his head forward, which is immediately reversed at frame 313 when a shot comes
from the front, driving his entire upper torso back into the seat. There are at
least two points to note here: The shot to the back of the head, moving the
head forward, was noted by the famous physicist Richard Feynman in an interview
with researcher David Lifton(9). The second point, that Kennedy's entire upper
body was suddenly thrust back into the seat, contradicts the often-quoted
disinformation about a "head snap"(10) resulting from a shot to the back of the
neck at the base of the head.

Debunkers have typically offered "explanations" for the large-volume
displacement of Kennedy's upper torso at the moment of the head shot. One
interpretation is that Kennedy had a neuromuscular reaction to the bullet
entering his brain. This possibility has been dismissed for two reasons: The
first is that Kennedy is thrown back like a rag doll, with none of the
stiffening associated with a muscular reaction. The second is that most of
Kennedy's cerebellum was blown out with the head shot, and a neuromuscular
reaction would not have been possible. The other major interpretation is the
Jet Effect"(11) theory, which has been demonstrated using small melons about
the size of a human head. Since these melon demonstrations don't simulate the
head as attached to a torso, the weight that is required to be "snapped" by the
jet effect is very small compared to the weight of the head plus torso.

There is one other item of note about the film that has gotten almost no
attention from researchers or debunkers, due to the apparent absurdity of the
claim it makes. There is an optical illusion, best seen in a low-resolution
view of the film, where the driver turns around and shoots Kennedy with a
handgun(12)(13). In a normal view with a good quality copy of the film, the
optical illusion can clearly be seen to be reflections from the driver's window
chrome strip and the passenger agent's head.

Still, the fact that the illusion is so dramatic when seen that way, and that
the illusion of the driver firing the shot occurs at precisely the moment of
the head shot, is disturbing. Adding to the problem is that the driver and
passenger agent both turn around and look at Kennedy at the same time as the
car is slowing down, then they turn back around to the front, then the driver
quickly turns back again towards Kennedy where the optical illusion and fatal
shot occur. One could imagine government agents editing the film and cloning
reflections over top of the driver's arm and gun, but being unable to remove
the event entirely, we're left with the apparent optical illusion.

This article will not attempt to deal with any of the medical or forensics
evidence, but I would like to note in passing that Kennedy's body left the
Dallas hospital wrapped in white sheets, in a deluxe presidential-style coffin.
The body arrived in the autopsy room in the Bethesda hospital wrapped in a
body bag, in a cheap shipping coffin(14).


The President's Commission (a.k.a. the "Warren Commission")

The first investigation, the President's Commission (known popularly as the
Warren Commission) was created by the chief suspect in the crime to head off
all other investigations. We know from real-life police work that when a woman
is murdered in her own home (and possibly elsewhere), the chief suspect is
always the boyfriend or husband if such a relationship exists, regardless of
alibi. The reason I say regardless of alibi is because of the possibility that
the suspect hired a third party to do the killing. This is particularly true in
a political murder since extremely large amounts of money can change hands as
a result of the sudden change of leaders.

Adding to the problem of allowing the chief suspect to run the investigation
was the fact that the only investigators employed by the commission were the
FBI and CIA, some of whose senior agents were (not coincidentally) also
suspects(15) in the planning and execution of the crime.

Another fundamental problem with the President's Commission is the
subordination of one branch of government to the other, in direct contravention
of the separation of powers prescribed by the Constitution. The construction
of the commission required Chief Justice Warren to report to the president.

One of the key members of the commission, Gerald Ford would become well known
eleven years later as the cover-up man for Watergate in the Nixon
administration. Adding to the list of coincidences here are some of the
Watergate burglars, particularly Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt, who have
been identified as participants(15) in the JFK assassination by various
witnesses including Marita Lorenz, a former CIA agent.

Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA until fired by President Kennedy, was another
key member of the commission. Dulles' connections to CIA agents involved in
the assassination, as well as his long-time friendship with and support of Nazi
Germany(16) did not suggest impartiality.

John J. McCloy, perhaps the number one government agent of all time and another
good friend and supporter of Nazi Germany(17), was also chosen for the
commission. Some of McCloy's other accomplishments were imprisoning
Japanese-American families in concentration camps during World War 2, and
getting most of the condemned war criminals released from prisons in Germany
during the 1950's. McCloy is famously quoted as saying to Attorney General
Biddle in response to Biddle's objection to the unjust imprisonment of
Japanese-Americans "The Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me."(18)

Otto Winnacker, a historian of the Third Reich, is alleged to be the author(19)
of the final report of the commission (a.k.a. the "Warren Report").


Other Political and Media Coverups

Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, responding to pressure from
Eugene Rostow, addressed a memo(20) to Bill Moyers (Johnson's aide and current
TV host) saying that the public needs to be convinced that Oswald is the real
assassin. This came immediately after Oswald's death, before any investigation
could commence. Katzenbach inherited his new prominence due to Robert Kennedy's
absence in the wake of his brother's murder.

Dan Rather, the only newsperson to see the Zapruder film the day or night after
it was made, reported to the nation that the president was thrown violently
forward(21) by a shot from the rear, in complete contradiction to what we see
on the actual film.

Geraldo Rivera, along with Dick Gregory and Robert Groden(22), was the first
national TV host to air the Zapruder film in March of 1975. With the weight of
the Church, Pike, Rockefeller and other committee hearings pressing on
Congress, this airing of the film sparked an outrage that pushed the
legislators over the edge and forced them to open a new investigation. Major
media closed ranks quickly after this leak, and people like Gregory and Groden
were persona non grata thenceforth. Even the once-liberal Geraldo Rivera is now
safely ensconced at the right-wing Fox News network.

In 1977 the HSCA (House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations)
was in high gear(23), with real investigators like Gaeton Fonzi chasing JFK
assassination witnesses all over the country. Richard A. Sprague, Richard E.
Sprague, Henry Gonzalez and Bob Tanenbaum were among the leaders of the new
investigation, but the CIA managed to slip their man G. Robert Blakey(24) onto
the team, and the committee quickly devolved into a CIA-controlled non-study
that required everyone to sign non-disclosure agreements granting full coverup
power to the chief suspects in the planning and execution of the crime, i.e.
the CIA.

Despite the stranglehold on investigation imposed by the CIA, and perhaps due
to Blakey's long-running grudge against the Mob, the HSCA concluded that there
was a 95 percent probability of conspiracy in the JFK assassination, followed
by Blakey's own book assigning responsibility to the Mob, with Oswald as one of
the Mob agents who was lucky enough to get the kill shot.

Major media quickly countered with the claim that the "95 percent probability"
was based solely on the acoustic evidence from the police dictabelt, but as
Louis Stokes(23) and others have pointed out numerous times, their conclusions
were not based solely or primarily on that evidence as claimed. What is most
interesting about major media reporting in this case is how they can dismiss
considerations of conspiracy when they have no access to the millions of pages
of classified information possessed by the government, when that same
government having full access to the classified documents declares that there
was indeed a conspiracy.

When Oliver Stone's JFK was in the works in early 1991, national columnist
George Lardner Jr. launched a savage attack on the film based on a stolen and
unfinished script. I've often wondered whether Mr. Lardner was feeling
defensive about the revelation that David Ferrie died just minutes after
Lardner left Ferrie's apartment on the morning of February 22, 1967.


Some Evidentiary Notes

While the government commissions focused on the possibility of three to five
shots, undoubtedly to keep the focus on a single assassin, many students of
this crime have accounted for up to 15 shots, noting several hits on the
president's limousine that were separate from the shots that hit Connally and
Kennedy, plus several bullets recovered from the plaza ground areas shortly
after the shooting.

Whereas the commissions denied knowledge of any shooters besides Oswald, a
number of suspicious persons were noted to be in Dealey Plaza at the time of
the assassination. Joseph Milteer, who described the assassination in detail to
an undercover FBI agent weeks before it occurred, just happened to appear in
the plaza at that moment although he lived far away in Florida. Reputed mobster
Eugene Hale Brading was detained at the Dal-Tex building in the plaza, and
said he merely stopped there to make a phone call. General Ed Lansdale of the
CIA black-ops teams was positively identified from photos shown to L. Fletcher
Prouty and other persons who knew Lansdale. One very clear photo of the outside
of the Depository building shortly after the shooting shows a man in a suit
who looks very much like George H.W. Bush, who had strong ties to
assassination-related persons and events from the Bay of Pigs invasion through
the JFK assassination and well beyond.

It's important to note here that Dealey Plaza was not a special place in Dallas
on that or any other day - it's merely a two-block area of town that sat along
the route Kennedy took from Love Field to the Trade Mart. Certainly Lee Oswald
worked in that area, but the presence of so many other nefarious characters in
that same small area at the same time is highly suspicious, and unlikely to be
coincidental.

Following the shooting of policeman Tippit, three bullet casings were found
near the body, and those casings matched the ones used in Oswald's revolver.
What's interesting about this is that revolvers don't eject their cartridges
like semi-automatic pistols do, and it's not at all likely that the shooter
would have stopped to unload the spent cartridges right then and there. In
fact, witnesses stated that the shooter ran off immediately after the final
shot. Note that the lower-cost revolvers don't offer rapid reloaders, and in
fact are almost always difficult to unload because the spent cartridges stick
tightly to the cylinder.

There are many anomalies in the so-called backyard photos of Oswald holding
newspapers, a rifle, and wearing a handgun. Ignoring all but the shadow under
the nose and the shadow behind the body, myself and a partner spent the better
part of a day in Beverly Hills circa 1992 trying to duplicate the look of the
shadows in those photos. We tried at different times of the day in order to
experiment with different angles of the sun, but to no avail.

One of Oswald's alleged handlers was David Atlee Phillips (a.k.a. "Maurice
Bishop") of the CIA, and there is a lot of speculation in the literature about
his role in the assassination. Despite the volume of writing about Phillips,
I've found it less than useful due to how well his tracks have been covered in
this case. The disturbing thing about Phillips is that he has sued publishers
over their allegations and prevailed, but those publishers were of course not
able to obtain the secret documents that would establish Phillips' whereabouts
and confidants in the Oswald timeframe of late 1963. It would be a dreadful
development if the CIA itself were to gain the ability to sue publishers over
allegations that the CIA has committed crimes, but if they had a way to
accomplish that by fronting their agents with money and lawyers "not connected"
to the agency, it could amount to the same thing.

George de Mohrenschildt is a person I find far more interesting, not only
because he was a personal friend of Lee Oswald, George Bush and Lyndon Johnson,
but with his relationship to Jackie Bouvier's (Jackie Kennedy's) aunt, Jackie
actually referred to him as "Uncle George" on occasion. Small world, eh?


Government-Sponsored Disinformation

When you consider what the CIA (to name an example) is capable of: Committing
major sabotage in foreign countries and covering that with beatings and
killings, overthrowing elected governments, fabricating history, destroying
reputations and all manner of other crimes, and then *legally* preventing
investigation of these same crimes through the "National Security" exception,
it's absurd that anyone should have to entertain debunkers' claims that
"Nothing happened because we don't do those kinds of things, and besides, you
can't prove it."

There is a longer term danger to allowing government agencies to create Big
Lies and then get official sanction for them. In the past it was the acceptance
of disinformation that allowed governments to target people by their ethnicity
or race, then round them up and work them to death in concentration camps.
Today's government is so concerned about so-called Conspiracy Theories that
they've appointed people like Cass Sunstein to propose making the dissemination
of such theories illegal.

Conspiracy Theories and Debunkers

Many books have been written about the JFK assassination by what I refer to as
professional debunkers.


References

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

2) http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1976662/posts

3) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm

4) http://wired.com/threatlevel/2007/04/who_killed_jfk_

5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Pinchot_Meyer

6) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKgrahamP.htm

7) http://www.benfrank.net/disinfo/

8) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/630507190X/ref=cm_pdp_rev_itm_img_3

9) http://www.assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/wound.html

10) http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5772.shtml

11) http://jfklancer.com/galanor/jet_effect_text.html

12) http://educate-yourself.org/cn/drivergreershotjfk.shtml

13) http://www.amazon.com/Murder-within-Fred-T-Newcomb/dp/B0006CMCB2

14) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lifton

15) http://newcombat.net/Conversation/2007/08/09/howard-hunt-cia-murder-jfk/

16)
http://hubpages.com/hub/The_Bush-Nazi_scandal_by_John_Loftus_former_Federal_Pro
secutor

17)
http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Nazi%20Connection%20to%20J
FK%20Assass.html

18) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmccloyJ.htm

19) http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/GoodAmericans.html

20) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKkatzenbach.htm

21) http://www.theblackvault.com/wiki/index.php/Zapruder_film

22) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapruder_film

23) http://www.ctka.net/pr1198-blakey.html

24) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKblakey.htm

25) http://www.patspeer.com/reclaiminghistoryfromreclaiminghistory

Recommended Reading

Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal (a.k.a. "Torbitt Document"), by William
Torbitt.

The Gemstone File: A Memoir, by Stephanie Caruana.

Who Killed JFK, by Dan Sarver.

Who Killed JFK, by Carl Oglesby.

The Guns of Dallas, by L. Fletcher Prouty.

The Umbrella System (Prelude to an Assassination), by Richard Sprague and
Robert Cutler.

The Men That Don't Fit, by Roderick MacKenzie.

Best Evidence, by David Lifton.

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publicatio
ns/csi-studies/studies/vol52no2/intelligence-in-recent-public-literature-1.html